Vienna Spring

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Set in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, these early works now published in English for the first time, show that from the beginning of his literary career, Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was already a master of both the short story and his favored fictional form, the novella. In the shorter pieces, the upper-class intellectual Zweig renders with sympathy some of life's outcasts: a "slow" student driven to violence, two ridiculed factory workers, a prostitute longing for love. Yet his keen perception and wry wit allow him to sidestep the sentimental and arrive at tender yet stark portrayals. The two novellas, "The Love of Erika Ewald" and "Scarlet Fever" follow the travails of characters closer in temperament and upbringing to Zweig's own. The first concerns a young pianist whose delicate nature interferes with her sensual fulfillment, the second, a gentle medical student struggling to adjust himself to the city's harsh realities. In these portraits, Zweig presents a theme that would figure not only in his later fiction but also in his own life as a Jewish writer in the Nazi era: the plight of highly sensitive souls in a crude and uncaring world.